I Love My Apple Watch

I have become obsessive about closing the rings on my Apple Watch. For those who are unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, the Apple Watch has a built in application that tracks your activity. It displays your progress using three colorful rings.

The blue innermost ring tracks how many hours you have stood up for a period of at least a minute. If you do it twelve times in a day, the ring is complete.

The florescent yellow middle ring tracks aerobic exercise. If you get in thirty minutes of exercise with an elevated heart rate, you complete this ring.

The red outer ring tracks how many calories you burn. You set your goal for daily calories burned at the beginning of the week. I have settled on 820 kilocalories as my goal.

I also have a goal of getting a minimum of 7500 steps in per day. My calorie goal usually does a good job of insuring that I more than meet that goal.

The way that this works is that I go about my day as I usually would. On days that I go to work, I often complete the standing and aerobic rings before I get home. I usually have walked about 3000 steps and have burned around 600 kilocalories.

On days that I don’t go to work, I tend to get far less done before the end of the day. I do try to keep my standing every hour ring current as you can’t make up for missed hours all at the end of the day.

In either case, about an hour or two before I plan to go to bed, I go to the bedroom and turn on the TV to YouTube. I then watch YouTube videos while walking in place in front of the TV until I have met all my fitness goals and closed my rings for the day.

I have to admit, my health has improved as a result. My A1C, a long term measure of average blood sugar, is down. I don’t get winded going up and down stairs. And, I usually don’t have any trouble going to sleep after one of these bedtime workouts.

WordPress 5 Has a New Look

WordPress has released version five of their blogging software. It includes a web based editor that provides the blogger with easy, web based tools for creating an attractive blog complete with modern stylistic components. This is the first post that I’ve written using this new editor so I’m still finding my way around.

I came across this blog posts that gives five tips for novice writers. I was surprised to find that I had already figured out four of the five tips. The one that I need to concentrate on is the last one, keep the act of writing fun. I think the most important tip he gave was to write often and read obsessively. I have learned that the only way you master any skill is to practice them.

The critique group that I participate in, the Downtown Writers Group of the Huntsville/Madison County Public Library (HMCPL) main branch, has published the second volume of short stories. This volume is entitled Librarium and comprises stories that all loosely align with the them of libraries. Volume one, A Grimm Imagination: Reimaginings of the Brothers Grimm, and volume two are now also available for the Kindle ebook reader. Full disclosure: I am an author in both volumes but all proceeds go to the HMCPL.